Reasons a book winds up on the DNF pile
So, I tried a new-to-me author last night. I read the first chapter and then deleted the sample. Here is the book:
Here is what Sharon Shinn’s blurb says about it:
“A vivid, violent, and marvelously detailed historical fantasy set in the perilous world that is medieval England in the middle of a war. Elisha Barber wades through blood and battle in his pursuit of arcane knowledge—forbidden love—and dangerous magic.”
Here’s what DB Jackson says about it:
“Blending magic and history, strong characters and gripping action, E.C. Ambrose brings a startlingly unique voice to our genre. Part epic fantasy, part medical thriller, part historical novel, Elisha Barber is at once dark, powerful, redemptive, and ultimately deeply satisfying.”
Here’s why I couldn’t bear to go on with it, even though all this sounds so promising (warning, the next paragraph will consist of spoilers for the first chapter of the book):
In the first chapter, Elisha’s estranged brother come to him for help because his, the brother’s, wife is suffering through a terrible delivery. Elisha finds the baby is breech and also the baby is already dead. In order to save his brother’s wife, despite the horror of this kind of surgery, Elisha cuts the dead baby into pieces and delivers the body that way. Despite his efforts, the wife dies. His brother commits suicide. End of chapter.
Now, tell me, assuming the book is well written and the (extremely gritty) setting well-drawn, would you keep going? Of course you can’t answer that without actually reading the first chapter for yourself. If you want to do that, here is the link to the book on Amazon.
However, this is the sort of beginning that I find practically unbearable, no matter how admirable a man Elisha is.
Is there anything that could have made this work for me?
Actually, there is:
Drop all that into the backstory. Don’t tell it as a prologue, just leave it a dark mystery in a tragic past. Jump ahead a couple of decades, or at least a couple of years, or at the very least a couple of months. Start the story wherever seems advisable. Move ahead with the action. Gradually reveal the tragic backstory as you tell the rest of the story.
That, in case you are curious, is how to keep a horrible, horrible incident without causing readers like me to recoil violently and then either delete your book or give it away. The distance gained by putting the tragedy in the past makes it far more tolerable to read about, particularly if the protagonist has managed to come somewhat to terms with the horrible incident.
Not that everyone should always handle a tragic backstory that way. Of course not. “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right!”
I’m just mentioning this as a way to make it work for readers who otherwise might not get past the tragedy and into the real story.
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Well, that first chapter does signal what the book is about. There surely are potential readers who would love it for the very reason you and I would put it down. Look at the list of popular books, and see how many include graphic torture, rape, and battle violence.
Sure, although I'm guessing there are fewer readers who would like a chapter where a good man goes through horrific tragedy than where a fairly terrible man commits rape. And battle violence just does not seem the same to me at all. The protagonist hacking his way through faceless enemy hordes is quite different from the protagonist steeling himself to try to save a woman and her child and completely failing. Actually, the failure of heroic effort is worse than the deaths.
I think it can depend on the degree of violence, or rather how detailed it is. Being plunged into flying viscera, stenches and sounds of horrible suffering, whatever the cause, signals a certain kind of story ("no one is safe"). Some readers do seek such out. I'm not one, but they're out there.There are also degrees. I remember a con panel in which a writer claimed that the opening sentence of a book was the most perfect opening ever. About half the audience agreed, but a lot just sat there, as the panelist slowly read the sentence, that vividly depicts a bloated corpse floating in a bay.
I wouldn't read sentence two, but obviously many would!
Sherwood wrote: "Well, that first chapter does signal what the book is about. There surely are potential readers who would love it for the very reason you and I would put it down. Look at the list of popular books,..."I think most people, outside of horror fans, don't pick up a book because it contains rape. (I really hope not, anyway). They read and love a book despite it, and/or because they accept that rape and violence are 'realistic' in a given story or genre. Pretty much every fantasy book I can think of contains violence to one degree or another, and I'm sure there are people who revel in things being as graphic as possible. But I don't think most fantasy fans would say they love fantasy because of the violence. They don't necessarily dislike it either, but that's not why they're here.
I stand by the point that tactically, you are more likely to gain a wider readership if you don't open with the graphic horror, but bring it in later. The people who will put a book down because the opener is graphic and horrible will often (not always, but often) finish the book if the graphic horrible stuff happens at a point late enough that they want to find out how everything ends. I'm a fantasy fan; basically every book I read contains violence. Sometimes it IS horrible and graphic. But I can get through it, it's worth getting through it, when I care enough about the story. Nobody cares about the story in your opening pages. The job is to make them care. Scare them away before they care, and...? You've got nothing. Except the minority who revel in such things, of course. But at that point you might as well write splatterpunk and be done with it.
I think there's a valid point to be made in 'I'm going to open with this horrible thing, so readers know what to expect later on'. But I'd rather have content warnings on books, like the Netherlands and Finland have for tv and film, little symbols that warn for violence or rape or discrimination or whatever. That way I can avoid a book like Elisha Barber without having to go through weeks of nightmares because I made the mistake of reading the first chapter.
I agree that opening with this scene probably narrows your readership. I don’t think it is necessarily a good idea, tactically. Which has nothing to do with an author's artistic judgment, of course.But I don't necessarily want content warnings either. The content that is going to bother reasers is extremely variable and individual. Just saying 'graphic violence' wouldn't work; it wasn't just the tragedy that bothered me, it was the complete failure of an effort to do something good.
Plus you just can't tell what will upset a reader. I mean, I would not have wanted to encounter a litter of happy puppies last year. Not until I actually had a full litter survive and turn out lovely. Imagine how much a happy-baby scene might hurt a woman who had just had a miscarriage. No author can actually avoid triggers, no matter how hard he or she tries. So, content warnings, no, imo.
Also, the corpse sentence baffles me. Or at least having anyone pick it out as a great example of craft. .... No, not seeing it.
*Book opens with detailed fridging of woman.**Book goes onto the 'skip this' shelf.*
Yes! I recollect hearing how wonderful 86 Charing Cross Road was. I started reading it--and it starts with the pointless death of a teen, which ruins a marriage. The teen was the same age as my kid, who had recently begun driving. I dropped the book on the floor, then returned it to the library unread.
You're definitely not the only parent I have heard make that point about not needing to read about anything tragic happening to a character the same age as their child. I didn't even notice that detail -- now i'm going to go look.
I had to look up "fridging of women". Yes. Or rather, nope. For me, death in childbirth is not something I want to read about even if it's not inserted mainly to advance a male character's plotline. Very nope.
There's no way to make content warnings specific enough to prevent anybody ever from being disturbed, no, but I don't see why you couldn't warn for 'major' things, the same sorts of things we already have warnings and ratings for in tv and film. Tragedy/graphic violence/rape/child abuse etc. As I said before, here in Finland we already have symbols for things like that embedded in the descriptions for films and tv, viewable on the public tv guide and right before a show begins playing. There's no real reason you couldn't do the same for books, and while that wouldn't protect everyone from everything, it would certainly help a lot of us avoid things we really don't want to read.
It always boggles my mind that there are writers who put these kinds of things in the opening pages. Either write it as ~tragic dark backstory~, as you suggested (my preference too) or put it in far, far after the opening, when readers are already invested in the characters/story/writing style and that investment is more likely to carry them through the horror. If nothing else, it is purely terrible business sense to start a book that way, because a whole lot of people are going to put your book down immediately and never pick it up again - and avoid everything you write thereafter.
I mean, I would still put the book down no matter where you put that scene, if it wasn't backstory but actually on the page. But more readers will power through if they've already fallen in love with your story/characters.
I'm reminded of the tv show House of Cards, where the first episode opens with someone killing a dog. That's the same kind of shock-horror that will have the vast majority of viewers stop watching immediately and never go near the show again, as my husband and I did. Versus Indra Das' novel The Devourers, which also contains really horrible graphic violence and rape, but late enough in the book that lots of readers are carried through by their interest in/love for the writing and/or the story.
There's a certain kind or level of horror which you can only get away with on-screen or on-page once your audience is already invested in finding out how things end, and I'll never understand the writers who are, in my opinion, stupid enough to open with it.